Deep Thoughts by Alan Keyes
Certainly it is true that the actual defense of our national borders is normally delegated to the professional military. But we must never think that this revocable delegation of responsibility for national defense is a transfer of ultimate responsibility. We, the people, are responsible for the defense of country and liberty, and the Second Amendment is crucial to our performance of that duty.
posted by Germanicu$ at 8:35 PM
14 Comments:
Alan Keyes kicks ass.
Back before I went to live in West Virginia for awhile (play banjo music) I shared the common caricature of gun-loving types as gap toothed yokels without college degrees, and upon getting to West Virginia I was not disappointed. At the same time, I have never lived anywhere where I felt as safe, despite very low wages, a substantial divorce rate, and low levels of education (commonly blamed for societal ills). My doors weren't locked, although I lived in a town with many neighbors. You really didn't want to try anything knowing that grandma wasn't just allowed to pack, but probably was. Most anywhere I went I felt safe, not so much because the urchins had guns but because they could not assume that I didn't. The rate of accidental gun deaths are almost certainly higher in West Virginia than in most places. Intentional ones, however, are not.
I certainly agree with the idea that more of us should be carrying guns, and also that more of us should find a spine and not listen to our handlers who tell us to roll over and play dead. Already the previous advice given to many just to do what a carjacker/hijacker tells you to has been replaced. The spirit of the great Alan Keyes (may his name be reverenced by us all--where is he these days anyway?) was shared by the Pennsylvania airplane crowd who thought it their responsibility to defend the country.
dood what are you smoking? i want some of that silly juice so i can make believe too.
I'm not an anti-gun nut, and I think that local communities should be able to set their gun laws on the basis of local conditions and traditions. That said, I think it's obvious that the Second Amendment's supposed "right to bear arms" is connected explicitly to the bearer's membership in a state militia, and does not guarantee universal rights to gun ownership. The reason I say this is... well... it's right there in the language of the amendment (I'm told that the NRA leaves that clause out of the version of the 2nd that's engraved on their facade in DC).
In any case, I'm highly suspicious of anecdotal evidence of the sort S-Tard presents for the guns=peace equation. And not just because John Lott made up that survey about people preventing all that crime using thir handguns, and then wrote to all those newspapers pretending to be one of his former (female!) students in order to say what a smart guy he was. Crime is a complex phenomenon, and as we all now know from the Freakonomics Bennettroversy, the single most powerful predictor of the level of crime in your neighborhood is the number of young men who live there who were raised by single mothers. Could we lower crime in those neighborhoods if the residents were packing? I don't know (and I suspect that lots of residents in those neighborhoods ARE packing), and I'm open to the possibility, but I would like to see a study that wasn't falsified by John Lott that corroborates the assertion.
There's no question that my situation is anecdotal, and also no question that John Lott is a master of fiction.
That having been said (and the land in WVA is ideally constituted for the growing of pot, and no Iowa can't have any) I have found (and I have noticed a pattern) that the people who tell me things about society are wrong in most every situation I encounter.
We are told that people loot because they are poor, but WVA is the 49th richest state in the country (or 2nd poorest, depending on the glass) and it was amazing how few riots occurred.
We are told that education keeps people and states safe; if only we spent more on education we'd be happy. The educational level of WVA is also 49th (in your face Louisiana!) and the streets, even in Nitro (chere Nitro) were beyond safe.
And then they tell me if we just make more LAWS then we'll keep LAWBREAKERS from having guns, and crime will drop.
You did not know me in my proud 280 pound days, but they all told me that cutting down on carbohydrates would never, ever work.
Fuck them!
Unfortunately I do not have data for handgun ownership by state; however, hunters with firearms break down by state as follows:
1-West Virginia
2-Vermont
3-Arkansas
4-Idaho
5-Wisconsin
West Virginia ranks 50th in percentage of people over 25 without a high school diploma. Yet they are the most likely to be off using a firearm to kill something. Yet they don't seem to turn them on each other. The total crime rate in WVA is 47th (Justice Department), the violent crime rate is 37th (ibid), and the murder and rape rate is 43rd and property crime rate is 48.
West Virginia has the 4th highest percentage of population in poverty and is ranked 49th in per capital personal income. (all of this can be found in Congressional Quarterly's State Fact Finder).
Now I still need to find if personal handgun ownership is as prevalent statistically as hunters with firearms; however, here I have demonstrated that many guns+low education+low income+high rates of poverty does not necessarily equal high crime, so we'll have to question the prevailing wisdom on at least one of those "causes" of crime, and it seems to me that guns are the most highly suspect.
Like I said, it's mostly a question of whether or not you were raised by a single mom. That's the single most predictive factor.
Are you suggesting that marriage is the cornerstone of a healthy society?
I'm suggesting that having a male authority figure in the house reduces the chances that the kids raised in that house go on to become criminals, as well as reducing the incidence of a laundry list of other sociopathic behaviors. I suppose it would be more accurate to say that long-term, stable relationships that involve both parents in the child-rearing process are the cornerstone to a not-totally-sociopathic society.
Oh, and that it's important that one of those parents be a male.
I don't doubt what you say. However, if it's all about having a male authority figure, why are guns controlled rather than absent dads?
Why indeed.
I suppose because it's because it's easier to appear that you're actually doing something about societal problems by limiting guns than by trying to get at the root causes.
This is just one of many instances of our society shooting at shadows.
Do you have access to relevant statistics about the relative increase/decrease of fatherless homes?
I do in fact have such statistics. I wrote an article a few years back arguing for parental licensure, and included many of the relevant numbers. I'll post it tomorrow if I can get around to it.
I'll be anxious to see it.
I think there is a sympton of human depravity to try to fix problems by going after the most convenient enemy rather than the most responsible, such as ignoring parental absence and going after gun rights.
It reminds me of the Ohio nurses certification issue. It seems that Ohio was running low on nurses, so their response was to form a database hooking up nurses seeking employment with hospitals/nursing homes/etc who were seeking nurses, in hopes that it would facilitate getting nurses into the state and finding jobs for those already there.
How did they pay for this database? They raised the price on nursing licenses. (In fairness I have no idea just how much, or how much they were in the first place)
So in order to lure nurses into the state or into employment, they raised the price of nursing in Ohio. Yes, that ought to do it.
The point, though, is that there were a hundred things they could have done that would have been more effective (state tuition reimbursements, education to career programs in the high schools, etc) but they thought that instead of implementing or augmenting such programs, the solution was to be found in upgrading the want ads.
I think this is analogous. While completely ignoring just what it is that makes people violent (or encourages violence), we take guns out of the hands of those who aren't, while leaving them in the hands of those who are (unless, for some reason, people ignoring laws against murder don't ignore laws against gun possession). Instead of going after the real problem (which I have every reason to believe you are right on), we go after the "easy target" with the money.
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